The Short Life of Sparrows (15 page)

She starts to repeat the symbols again, but the door flies open behind us. We both jump in our chairs. Lil runs at the table, blowing the candles out. She takes each candle and throws it into the fire. “I cannot believe what I am seeing,” she fumes, slamming the book shut. “I don’t expect to ever repeat myself. There is no magic in this house. Isaiah, out. Calli and I need to have a talk. Two rules in one day. It’s like you want me to get rid of you.”

I nod, seizing my hat from the table.

“Isaiah?” Lil chimes as I put my hand on the door’s latch.

“Yes?”

“That ritual blade has sat for 18 years to gather dust,” she says, a hand glued to her hip. “You’d better wash that cut in clean water before you bandage it.”

“Yes ma’am,” I say, pulling the door closed. I plod down the porch steps, hopeful that I haven’t left Calli in too much trouble—but more so grateful that I wasn’t just dismissed.
43 days.

19

CALLI

T
his day needs torched. From my embarrassing meltdown after my dream in front of Isaiah, to Lil burning grimoires after finding us trying to cast—and now I’m inventing new curse words as I lug the buckets down to the river. The other Seers never tire of the same insipid tricks. I shouldn’t be surprised that they cut the rope at the well. It’s the third time this summer they’ve done it. I hope it’s thoroughly thrilling for them to watch me walk back and forth to the river, because I’m not giving them the scene they want. If I stood out there mumbling a chant and trying to lift water with my mind, they’d be red-faced in the grass like overripe tomatoes.      

Kicking off my shoes as I reach the steep bank, I set one of the buckets aside so I can balance. I see his rumpled hat first. Isaiah hunches, and with the concentrated thinking he’s doing, there should be smoke rising from his neck and shoulders. Half-sliding down the crumbling earth, I grab at some clawed roots so I won’t fall backward.

“What are you stewing about?” I stand over him, but he looks ahead with that dreadful, misshapen hat hiding his eyes. A quick survey of the ground yields only one decent option. I stake the bucket upside down in the mud, situating myself on the pail beside him. “I’m sorry I even asked you to be there when I casted. If it helps, Lil was too busy yelling at me. You’re not going to lose your job.”

He breaks a twig in his hands. “Oh yeah? Before we tried to doom perverts of future generations today, Lil came down to the shed. Daphne was there.”

“Oh,” I say, feeling an awkward blush rip across my cheekbones. “You weren’t…”

“No.” He puts the flats of his hands up, seemingly as mortified as me. “It’s not like that. We’re just getting to know each other. But I think Lil knows there’s something beyond friendship between us. As much as I like Daphne, maybe it’s for the best if I stop this now. Before it can become something real. It may sound harsh, but I need this money. I need it enough, that I can’t mess it up—even for Daphne.”

Isaiah never minds talking to me with solid, unflinching eyes. He says it’s the money, but he’s not a very practiced liar. The way he tips his head down as he tells me this—he can’t look right at me. It’s not just about a place to sleep or the money. My stomach feels as if it’s a canyon taking the brunt of a landslide. He’s worried about leaving. Whether we meant to or not, Daphne and I have made him a part of our everyday routine. I sort of need him around lately, and in a way that’s different than my friendship with Daphne. Isaiah’s the only one who dares to give me warty, unpolished honesty. He does so without having anything to gain from it.

Pushing my toes down into the silky mud, I let the cool water splash over my calves. “There’s no way you’ll be able to fix everything before the cold comes. Lil needs you too much to send you away over flirting with Daphne. That roof is eighteen years of guessing where the next leak will be. Who says you have to leave in the fall?”

“What?” he laughs. “Why wouldn’t I?” He takes his hat in his hands, bunching it in his fists as he turns it. The poor hat has suffered too much mistreatment from Isaiah’s unspoken thoughts.

I scoop mud into my palms, watching it drop in fat drops through the webbings of my fingers. “Face it. You’re good at chopping wood. Much faster than Lil and I. I’m terrible with an ax. And you’re the only person who knows how to tell me when I’m being a complete crab, without making me into more of one. If there was only money in this for you, you wouldn’t have agreed to help me with casting. I mean, what if that spell had actually called for chicken blood? You were prepared for it.”

He purses his lips, still digging into that damn hat.
Oh, how sentimental pronouncements give me imaginary hives
. But he’s been shoved about and overlooked for so long. I’m about to tell him how he makes life in this stuffy place more fun—how  holding me after my nightmare kept me from breaking into irreparable pieces. He treats any kind words about him like they’re a pretty paper wrapped to hide some inevitable insult, and he almost balls his fists whenever anyone sits too close. A sappy announcement about how necessary he is—well, coming from me, it would probably be even more unnerving for him.

“Isaiah,” I say with absolute firmness, “Your hat is by far the most repulsive thing, and it does nothing for your otherwise acceptable features. Now. I know you think I just run around saying everything I shouldn’t, but I don’t say anything with the intent of wounding people. And here I am, bravely risking the fallout of wounding your fragile, pudding-like soul—because real, forever friends don’t let each other wear ugly hats. I’ve wanted to say it for a month now, and I can bear it no longer. I know my witch is showing, but please take that thing off your head.”

Stuffing the frayed hat against his curls, he pushes the brim back over his eyes. A splitting smile full of white teeth betrays him anyway. “This hat keeps Lil from trying to rake my hair out of my face. Don’t think I don’t know she’s capable of sneaking up behind me with a pair of sewing scissors.”

“Your hair matches your whole scruffy-
I don’t care about anything
-exterior,” I say, scrunching my face. “It’s almost convincing too.” I’m plopping mud on top of the hat before he thinks to dodge it. “Mud might improve it.” Patting the sticky pile down, I shake my head. “No. That hat is still ugly.”

Next thing he’s swiping the side of my face with his giant paw of a hand, smearing mud in my hair and ear. “Did you ever consider that some of us aren’t as vain as you?”

My mouth drops, and I chuck a clod of hard dirt at his knee. “I am not. Take it back. I don’t care about my hair and frilly dresses. You have to be poised and pretty to be vain.”

“Ha! You think because you don’t keep your hair up or prance around in full skirts, that you’re not vain?” He laughs harder as he swipes a stripe of mud down the front of my face. I’m spitting grit and sludge from my lips, and I make sure to do it in his direction.

“Oh, Calli. You’re the vainest person I know. Well, after Rowe. Your Awakening dress was all about keeping all eyes on you. And even if you hate the Nightbloods, you’re not very smooth about taking note of when one of them stares at you. You dance with those jerks because you love being spun around in a nice dress and being dipped by somebody who’s looking at just you. Vain. Vain. Vain.”

I tear the hat from his head, holding it at arm’s length. “I’m keeping this until you apologize.”

“Keep it.” He taps his teeth, grinning. “You’ve got something right there. In your teeth.”

I don’t need him to tell me. My mouth is full of brown grit, and it tastes absolutely awful. We sit with beads of dirty water snaking down our faces, and I laugh at me too. As I puddle water over my face to scrub it away, my smile weakens. “You should at least stay through the winter.”

“Even if I did … I can’t stay forever. They’d never let me. And Daphne is probably through with me after this morning. I think I was too convincing when I told Lil it wouldn’t happen again.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Daphne. I’m sure she knows you did what you had to, to convince Lil. Just in case, I’ll tell her.”

He sucks in a sharp breath, holding it in as he wipes absently at the mud on his knuckles. “Lil didn’t give either of us much choice in the matter. She makes it sound like the Nightbloods would actually come after me.”

I want to say how wrong he is—but I saw Lucas purposely trip Isaiah last time he came by Mildred’s. Rowe talks to him like he’s the carrier of some foreign disease. The Nightbloods have fistfights to the point of broken bones all of the time, and Isaiah isn’t even one of us. Lil always has creased eyebrows, as if the crowd of lines on her forehead will spell a shroud of invisibility around Isaiah while he’s here. When the Coven Mistresses are taking their tea in their yards, even Daphne even knows better than to laugh too loudly at his attempts at a joke.

No, he can’t stay permanently
. As I crush the soggy hat in my palms, I begin to see Isaiah’s use for it. It’s already pathetic, and I can squeeze it as hard as I want to without worrying about affecting it. “What do we do then?”

Hoisting me by my elbow, he helps me get my footing as I step from the river. “We enjoy the summer,” he says, “when nobody’s looking. You—me—and Daphne. Just like we have been.” He retrieves the pail from the mud, dipping it down into the stream until the water sloshes over the rim of the bucket. “Forget the well. We’re going to buff up those skinny arms of yours with trips to the river for drinking water. And then you won’t have any more trouble cutting firewood when I’m gone.”

20

ISAIAH

I
took my dinner back to the woodshed. I don’t fancy being elbowed and bumped by Nightbloods who smell like they fell into a barrel of cheap cologne water. I could feel their eyes too, when one of the Coven Mistresses clapped and tried to pull me up from my seat. I’m not sure how that was seen as a threat, as if I’d have taken up with her after a dance. She looked to be ninety and had spaces between every surviving tooth in her mouth. Shuffling the meat and gravy around more than actually eating it, I suppose I’m sulking.
Daphne did smile at me.
It was brief, but I saw it before she turned to serve some Nightbloods the rice pudding. So she must not be angry about what I said to Lil. At least there’s that.

Taking one last indifferent bite, I reckon I’m just not that hungry. I scrape the remains into the fire and set the dish on the uneven tabletop by the bed. Specks of orange cinder burst as I stoke the fire with extra kindling. My hand goes to the building heat. It’s funny how the night chill here makes you forget the sun bore down hours before.

I’ll give these crazy magicians one thing—they don’t hold back when they get together. The walls are splitting and cracked, and I can still hear their music and shouts. A pounding of drums almost muffles the winding, high pitch of the flutes. I hear giggling too, familiar laughter that has me hurrying to fasten the top buttons of my shirt. A chipper knock lights on the door, and the sound has Calli’s tipsy assurance all over it. “Are you dressed and fully presentable?” she calls. “I don’t need to see your naked backside. I won’t speak for Daphne though.”

I swing the door open with force, but I can’t pretend to be bothered by her disastrous way with words. Calli waves a sack at me. “We brought you dessert. You left without any.”

Daphne hesitates, one step behind Calli. Her caramel eyes roll upward from her feet, a touch of genuine happiness at her cheeks. She’s wearing a cream colored dress with little pink rosebuds on it. Her lips are dusted in a pearly tint, some powdery stuff that brings out her eyes. God. I’d love to reach out and brush the soft curls from her face. I clear my throat before I remember we’ve made it a far too predictable way of greeting each other. “Daphne,” I nod. “You look very nice tonight.”

She reaches up and kisses my cheek briskly as she comes in the door. “Thank you.”

The red hits my face as I rub aimlessly at my forearm. Calli smiles as she stuffs a cookie in her mouth. “Told you he’s a worrier,” she mumbles to Daphne. “And a blusher apparently.”

“You weren’t really worried that I’d believe what you said to Lil?” Daphne scrunches the side of her lips. “I don’t know what else we would’ve said to her when she saw me here.”

Calli eats the last of her cookie, sweeping the crumbs from her hands. “You should’ve said you both have wishful fantasies about knocking boots. Lil’s the one who’s constantly saying truth is the most prudent.”

“So you ladies are that bored already?” I ask, always ready to keep Calli from bludgeoning pleasantries. “I thought you’d want to dance. You’ve been talking about it for days.”

Calli collapses in the only chair, forcing Daphne to find a seat on my bed. I sit down beside her, keeping my hands to my knees. “Did you have a nice time?” I ask Daphne, wondering who might’ve asked her to dance after I left.

She shrugs. “It was fine. I mostly hid behind the food and drink tables, making sure there was plenty to eat for everyone.” Daphne slides her hand into mine, and a shock charges through me. As her fingertips touch my palm, my mind wipes clean like a chalk covered slate under a sponge.

“Did you see the way Beatrice rubbed up to Rowe?” Calli snaps, the edge in her eyes like serrated blades. “I don’t care who he dances with. But I do mind that he sneaks into my dreams without my say-so, and
then
dances with other girls. No wonder other Seers slobber all over him. He must exhaust himself, pimping himself out in everybody’s sleep. I should find a curse that makes his manhood wilt like a dried noodle.”

“Maybe he didn’t ask you to dance because he’d rather actually dance than fight. It is supposed to be a party,” Daphne says.

“He did ask me to dance though,” Calli says, sighing. “Two times. I declined both invitations. Nobody is going to badger me into liking them. Even if I don’t care for May, I would never entertain the likes of someone who treated any woman that way.”